


Shut Eye

by audreycritter



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Backstory, Childhood, Coffee, Gen, Insomnia, Neglect, Trauma, autism mention, canon character death, janet tries to be a good mom but she doesn't always know what she's doing, not graphic, tim is super intelligent, tumblr asks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 12:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9439427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: It's easy to look at Tim Drake and think that his fistful of issues-- anxiety, insomnia, a worrisome coffee habit-- are the result of his tenure as Robin. But what if they predated that? What if they'd been around for a long, long time? What if Tim needed to be Robin just as much as Batman needed a Robin at his side?Janet Drake is trying but he's never been an easy kid, exactly. And she'd be the first to tell you that it's not Tim's fault, but that doesn't really change much.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own DC Comics characters.
> 
> I answered some tumblr asks recently about trauma/brain development and mentioned that I thought Tim's issues might have been around for quite a while. I got another ask about exploring that idea in fiction form and this happened. I'm sorrynotsorry.

Timothy Jackson Drake was the kind of baby that defied parenting books. He was not a particularly active infant, but he craved motion instead of sleep. He exhausted every chapter of sleep advice while he exhausted himself, Janet Drake, and the three nannies that had come and gone by the time he was seven months old.

During the day, when the doctors and psychologists and parents who had penned the books said he was supposed to be kept awake, he was content to gaze at toys or attempt to roll over or gum on his chubby hands. He did not nap, except those places or times it was inconvenient-- the ten minute drive to the pediatrician, Jack’s shoulder right before he had to leave for a meeting.

In theory, he should have been exhausted by the time bedtime rolled around (nine, then eight, then seven, on the dot, because the books said schedule was important, the books said maybe he was overtired and earlier was better), and he was exhausted-- exhausted enough to let his eyes close with the swaying motion of being carried to his crib.

But in the gap between arms and mattress, his eyes would snap open and he would shriek and wail as if hurt or gravely offended. Once, on a new book’s recommendation, they tried to let him cry it out. Three hours of screaming ended with a sweaty, red-faced, furious baby vomiting all over his sheets.

They tried everything.

Music, white noise, fan, night light, blackout blinds, organic cotton sheets, warm pajamas, no pajamas, extra formula, sensitive formula, a teddy bear.

Nothing worked.

“He hates sleep,” Janet said more than once, eyes ringed with deep circles even make-up couldn’t cover anymore.

“Maybe,” Jack agreed absently, looking over stock reports.

“He hates me,” she complained, when walking the halls to lull Timothy to sleep resulted in him screaming in her ear when he realized she was walking toward his bedroom. Somehow, he knew.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Jack said without looking up.

Timothy arched his back and howled at the world.

Nanny after nanny quit when it was clear that their job involved no naptime breaks to pee or eat and hours of carrying around a miserable, tired baby who jerked his head up every time he suspected his eyes might be closing.

“He’ll grow into it,” the pediatrician said.

But if anything, he was getting more resistant to sleep, more aware of their methods.

Things that had once worked for brief hours, like driving in circles with him strapped into the car seat, backfired and before long he cried in shrill suspicion anytime they had to drive anywhere.

One by one, their meager methods faded and he would crawl, then toddle, around the house in staggering fatigue until he finally slumped over somewhere around one in the morning with Janet or a half-asleep nanny trailing after him. Sometimes they’d risk moving him if it seemed especially uncomfortable, like halfway down from a dining room chair, but other times if he was on carpet or the couch or even once inside the piano bench, they’d leave him. Moving him often woke him up, and once he was out they only had until five in the morning or so, anyway.

Then Timothy Drake discovered books and his temper, in the same few week span.

Janet Drake, desperate for some relief and maybe, maybe a solid three hours of sleep and a nanny who wouldn’t quit, found her world flip-flopped.

Now Timothy was angry about everything. Nothing made him happy. He threw and bit and pulled and roared his way through every day, upsetting sippy cups and plastic plates of cheerios and her fragile sense of well-being.

But at night, he’d sit in his crib and happily hum to himself while his fat little fingers turned thin pages with impossible care. She guessed he still stayed awake until one or two in the morning, but she slept through all of it, because at least he wasn’t screaming and at least he was staying in his crib (he had taught himself how to climb out the same week he learned to pull himself to standing, and would fling himself toward the floor and crawl away while indignantly crying).

“Is that really something we should indulge?” Jack asked once, looking at the video monitor from their master bathroom.

“Shut up, Jack,” Janet had murmured, almost asleep already. “At least he’s quiet.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t love Timothy. It was just that loving Timothy was so exhausting and she wasn’t entirely sure, despite Jack’s insistence, that Timothy liked her very much in return.

“Just wait until he says mama,” one mother advised her at one of the only playgroup meetings she attended. “It changes everything.”

The mother doling out this advice bounced a smiling toddler in her own arms, who demanded a kiss in childish babbling a second later.

Janet looked across the room where Timothy was sitting, surrounded by the chaos of playing children, studying a book about wild lions. Another boy stumbled on him and Timothy screamed and hit the round-cheeked face of the other boy with the book.

They didn’t go back to that playgroup.

But the other mother had been right, in a way.

Timothy’s temper, so volatile and constant, dropped off almost in the course of a single day. His wordless shrieking and chattering was just beginning to worry her-- the books said he should have a vocabulary of close to two dozen words now, and until that day she didn’t think he had any.

That day, he picked up a cup full of watered down apple juice and held it aloft like he was going to pitch it onto the floor, his face already flushing red with fury, and he paused with it clutched in his tiny hands. Then he looked at Janet and held the cup out, and said so clearly she didn’t process it at first, “No, I want milk.”

“Please,” she prompted automatically, in a stupor, staring at him.

“Please, I want milk. Where is it?” he said, blinking at her calmly.

And just like that, with rare exceptions, his temper had vanished.

The nanny had been with them for four months (a record), Timothy was speaking in full sentences and looking at picture encyclopedias until he passed out at night.

Jack suggested they take a vacation.

Without Timothy.

Janet only felt a twinge of guilt when she agreed.

“I love you,” she said to him, kissing his head, the morning they left.

“I love you,” he echoed, while watching a butterfly as they stood in the driveway, the nanny clutching his hand.

She wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her or the winged insect. Her consolation was that when she picked him up and hugged him, his arms snaked around her neck and squeezed. His little body was warm and limp against her, trusting and cuddly. He pulled back and looked at her face.

“Mom,” he said, bypassing the traditional repetitive syllables. He twisted in her arms and pointed. “A painted lady.”

She was fairly certain he was talking about the butterfly that time.

They fell into a routine. Jack had missed her traveling with him and she had missed it, too. It seemed unfair to put Timothy through the red eye flights and different hotel rooms and gauntlet of available foods, and every nanny they hired promised he never seemed very distressed at their absence.

Janet wasn’t sure if this was comforting or wounding.

“He’s such a good baby, so quiet,” one nanny said. “So polite.”

Janet wondered if maybe she was talking to the wrong nanny.

They’d come home and Timothy would tear around the house, whooping like a banshee, while Janet talked about the places they’d gone. She didn’t know how much he heard while he was standing on his head, tangled in the living room curtains. But he asked questions that were, if strange or specific, on topic. She couldn’t answer half of them.

Once, when he was three, they came back from Argentina and she’d gotten a book to read with him. It had been a while since they’d sat and read, but Janet assumed from his overflowing bookshelves that the nanny kept them both busy. Timothy snuggled up next to her, happily enough, but half a page in he put a hand right over the text.

“This is not real,” he said firmly.

“No,” she agreed. “It’s fiction.”

“Spiders do not talk,” he said peevishly, jabbing an accusing finger at the next page.

Janet’s heart skipped a beat when she realized he was reading, and reading ahead of her. His little face was a pinched picture of disgust.

“Spiders do not talk,” he repeated, as if scolding her. He slid off the couch and darted to the bookshelf. He came back with an orange bound field guide and climbed up next to her again and opened it, pointed to a microphotography image of a garden spider. “This is a real spider,” he said.

Janet put the storybook away and spent the rest of the hour pointing to words, amusing herself and not testing him.

She was testing him.

She was also proud.

“Jack, did you know Timothy can read?” she asked when he walked into the room.

“Good,” he said, tearing open an envelope. “He’ll get into a good preschool. I thought we could go to the circus tonight. A good one is in town.”

“Elephants!” Timothy shouted, standing on the couch. Janet made a mental note to look into preschools before they left again. It was probably overdue-- she kept forgetting how quickly he was growing up.

At the circus that night, Jack pulled strings and they met the acrobats and the elephants before the show. Janet snapped a picture of Timothy on the shoulders of a young, dark-haired acrobat. She didn’t think she’d ever been good with children at that age, but the acrobat had Timothy giggling within seconds.

Once in their seats, Timothy had watched everything, sometimes covering his ears when the announcements or music pumped through the speakers grew too loud. Jack had gotten them good seats, and Timothy stood on his with Janet’s arm around his waist for safety. Their neighbor, Bruce Wayne, sat a dozen seats away and it was the first time Janet had seen him since the Christmas party at his house two years before.

Timothy’s attention was fixed on the circus with a patience that belied his age, his eyes wide and his little spine rigid under her hand. He watched the elephants, the clowns, the lions, the firebreather, the acrobats, the plunge to their deaths.

Half the crowd screamed and the other half gasped, all in unison; it was a wrenching sound mingled with the bodies hitting the hard, packed ground and it lingered in Janet’s dreams for years after. Everyone was so focused on not looking, or looking for help, or moving to or away, that it was several minutes before she heard Jack snap, “Godammit,” and she realized Timothy was looking straight at the bodies with a blank expression as he gradually comprehended it wasn’t part of the show.

“Dead,” he announced calmly, as Jack swept him off the seat and over his shoulder.

Janet followed, turning her head from the pools of blood when they walked toward the exit. She put her hand over Timothy’s eyes just as they swept out of the tent; too late, she knew, because he’d tracked the bodies as they moved through the crowd.

For the first time since he’d begun lulling himself to sleep with books, he woke crying that night.

“Dead,” he kept saying when she picked him up to bounce him on her hip. “Dead. Dead.”

After the fourth night like it, she took him to the pediatrician. She asked about seeing a child psychologist, but the doctor seemed more interested in the fact that Timothy could read and was putting a model of the human eye together on the exam table after taking it apart with his nimble, chubby hands.

“He’s a little young for conversational therapy,” the doctor said, leaning back on his stool. “But I think you might find some help if you have some intelligence screenings done.”

“He’s very smart,” Janet said defensively.

“He is. He’s very bright. It might help to see if he’s dealing with autism or–”

“He’s not autistic,” Janet snapped. “He’s fine. Aren’t you listening to me? He saw two people, well,” Janet noticed that Timothy’s fingers had stopped adjusting pieces. She made a vague downward motion with her hand and raised an meaningful eyebrow at the doctor.

“Does he have friends?” the doctor pressed.

“Friends?” Janet demanded. “He’s three. His friends are the Kratt brothers and Elmo. He makes eye contact. He hugs me and Jack. He talks to us. He doesn’t mind new places. He’s fine.”

“Hmm,” the doctor said noncommittally.

“I’m signing him up for preschool,” Janet said as a last defense, feeling attacked. “If his teachers notice anything, they’ll say something.”

“Alright,” the doctor said, standing. “It was nice to see you, Timothy.”

“Tim,” the boy corrected, holding up the reconstructed model eye. “Look. The pupil is in half.”

They left the pediatrician’s and within ten days, Tim was enrolled in preschool, Janet had found a new pediatrician, and his nightmares had stopped. She didn’t bother looking for a child psychologist, figuring his young mind had rebounded after given enough time.

Tim took to preschool like a fish to water and, satisfied he was adjusting well, Janet resumed traveling with Jack. The nannies never complained about him anymore, except laughing updates that he asked too many questions. They still couldn’t seem to keep a nanny longer than six months, but now it was always external things and not Tim himself. Family illness, finished college, another job opportunity, cancer.

When Tim was six, they came back with presents that had very different outcomes. Janet brought him an encyclopedia of planes she’d found and set aside time between lunch and her chiropractor’s appointment to look at it with him. When he opened it, he flipped slowly through the first few pages and though he was trying hard to smile she could tell he was disappointed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, wrapping an arm around him. He stiffened. “It’s okay if it’s boring right now. Maybe you’ll like planes later.”

“I have this one,” Tim said, as if admitting it pained him. “I got it when I was four. It’s…it’s good though.”

“Oh,” Janet said, taking the book in her hands. “We can exchange it.”

This was a lie and he knew it. She’d purchased it in the English section of a bookstore in Germany.

“What are you reading now?” she asked, trying to keep him talking, to show she wasn’t upset. Or, wasn’t very upset.

“Harry Potter,” he said, retrieving the book and sitting down. He was halfway through the second one, or so she guessed from the number on the spine.

“I thought you didn’t like fiction,” she said.

“I’m not a baby,” he rolled his eyes.

“You’re six,” she said, looking over his thin shoulder at the dense block of text.

“I’m glad you noticed,” he said, sounding suddenly bitter and moody.

“I told you, I’m sorry we missed your birthday,” she said, guilt washing over her all over again. “You said it was a good party, though.”

“I’m trying to read.”

She got up.

“Timmy-boy!” Jack’s voice boomed through the room. He missed Janet’s warning glance and headshake. “I got you a camera. Thought you might like playing with it.”

Rather than insist he was reading, Tim abandoned the book in the blink of an eye to take the heavy, black digital camera from Jack.

It was too large, too expensive, too complicated for a child and Janet had tried to tell Jack so, but he’d refused to listen. Tim struggled to hold it up but flipped through the buttons like he’d been doing it all his life.

“It has manual focus,” he said, sounding excited.

“You can use autofocus for now,” Janet said, trying to avoid the eventual meltdown over blurry pictures.

“Don’t discourage him,” Jack said easily, grinning at his own success. He posed for a picture.

He fiddled with the settings all afternoon and Janet felt both justified in her worry and heartsick with the aptness of it, when she caught Tim in the hallway outside the dining room thumbing through pictures and muttering, “Stupid, stupid. All blurry. Stupid.”

When she tried to talk to him, his face went blank and he shrugged, turning the camera off and letting it hang from the strap around his neck. It was too large, the leather band spanning from his nape where his hair curled all the way down to the collar of his science day-camp shirt.

“It’s fine,” he said, brushing past her.

She caught him again, ten minutes later, sniffling and rubbing his eyes while he talked to the nanny in the kitchen. The woman was flipping organic salmon filets in a skillet and Tim didn’t have her full attention, but maybe he preferred it that way, Janet thought with a pang. She was suddenly jealous of the woman but Tim was all smiles again by dinner, so she let it go.

Late that night, Tim climbed onto her bed with the camera. She was sipping a glass of wine while Jack yelled at someone on his cellphone from the walk-in closet. She’d already taken her makeup off and let her hair down, so when Tim pointed the camera at her she laughed.

“Not now,” she said, putting a hand over her face.

“Don’t miss my birthday party next year,” he said, kneeling on the bed with the camera held up. He said it simply, without malice or hurt, like he was giving instructions for delivering a package or ordering food.

Janet dropped her hand and let him take the picture, the wine glass near her mouth while she smiled for him.

“Okay,” she said, the smile fading after the shutter clicked.

Tim crawled off the bed and opened the closet door to take a picture of Jack with his arm thrown in the air, his face flushed as he shouted at someone about a contract falling through.

Janet never saw either picture. She assumed he deleted them, but she also didn’t say “I told you so,” to Jack about the camera. She went to sleep accepting that she’d been wrong, again, about Tim, and woke up to him already outside on the back lawn climbing a tree to take pictures of the house. The nanny was on the patio in a bathrobe, yawning and drinking coffee, and Janet wasn’t entirely certain that Tim had ever gone to bed that night.

But saying anything to Tim about sleep was pointless, so she didn’t bother. She helped him set up an email account so he could send her pictures when she and Jack flew out again at the end of the week. Rather, she stood next to him, giving him permission, while he pecked at the keys one finger at a time and set up an email account for himself.

Even though they weren’t there long that time, it wasn’t like Janet was never home. She came home for a month, sometimes two, at a time and left again with Jack for business or sightseeing. Her trips away always started as one week, or two weeks, and turned into six or seven or nine. Three months, even with stellar reports from the nanny, was her limit.

But at home, Tim had school and computer club and LEGO Robotics club and photography class and after school science camp and swim lessons and soccer practice, and it seemed selfish to interrupt his education to do…nothing. So she saw him between dinner and bedtime, and sometimes in the morning he’d creep into her curtained bedroom and tell her goodbye before he left for school.

And Janet had lunch dates and appointments and gym classes and meetings of her own, and if Tim was dissatisfied with this arrangement he rarely showed it.

She did come home from India for his seventh birthday, with Jack.

She came home from Hong Kong for his eighth birthday, without Jack, but with his apologies and an expensive traditional film camera.

Tim had a gift for her, too, and it made her feel guilty about how badly the rest of the time at home went, because it was only the second time Janet had been forced to fire a nanny and it just figured that it would be a nanny Tim was particularly attached to.

The trouble started when Tim walked in to give her the photography book he’d put together as a gift, the printed album in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other. She accepted the book and reached for the coffee, but Tim pulled it back smoothly, quickly, and frowned at her as if disappointed.

“Tim, I’ll look at the book,” she promised. “Right now. You don’t have to tease.”

“I’m not,” he said, sounding irritated. He sipped the coffee. “I can get you a cup if you want some.”

“You’re seven,” she said.

“Eight, since this morning,” he answered, sitting down on the couch. His feet dangled over the edge of the cushion. He’d always been small for his age and it made the mug he held seem even more ridiculous.

“Eight is too young for coffee,” she said sternly. “Go dump it out.”

“I have a cup every morning,” he protested, whining, holding the mug more closely to his chest. “Look at the book I made you.”

“Letitia,” Janet called sharply to the nanny, straightening her posture.

“Mrs. Drake?” the woman answered, coming into the room with an armful of Tim’s laundry.

“How long have you allowed Tim to drink coffee?”

“Oh,” the woman said, bewildered. She seemed more confused by Janet’s tone than anything else. She made eye contact with Tim. “Two months, ago, now?” Her gaze shifted back to Janet. “He has trouble sleeping and coffee always makes me sleepy, so we tried it.”

“It doesn’t help,” Tim said. “But I like how it tastes.”

“Of course it doesn’t help,” Janet snapped. “You’re a child. It’s full of caffeine and can stunt your growth.”

“Myth,” Tim said, patting the book she was holding. “I did research. Are you going to look at the book?”

Janet closed her eyes for a moment and said, “No more coffee, Tim. That will be all, Letitia.”

Tim threw himself back against the couch, scowling, and then looked straight at her and took a long drink of his coffee. Janet sighed and flipped open the book. Maybe she could try to reason with him later, when he wasn’t already mad at her.

The pictures were good-- photography class and his personal drive had paid off. But she noticed a bothersome trend only three pictures in. The pictures were all black and white: a smiling homeless man, the jutting and crumbling gargoyle of a downtown bank, a crowd of stony-faced teenagers with spiked hair and skateboards.

“Tim,” Janet said, her voice scared and hard at once, “Tim, where did you take these?”

“That’s Charlie,” he said quickly and excitedly, leaning forward and tapping the picture of the grizzled, toothless man. “He’s nice. I buy him hot chocolate sometimes.”

“Tim,” Janet said again.

“I don’t know their names,” Tim said dismissively of the teens, “but they were excited about the pictures. I printed some at the Walgreen’s for them.”

“Tim,” Janet hissed.

“Gotham,” he said casually, as if it were obvious. The problem was that it was obvious and he was eight years old and should not have pictures like the work of a fucking Gotham Times’ journalist’s side project about poverty and the city.

Janet was too shocked to summon any other words for a moment. She turned another page.

It was a building at night, clouds in the distance, the silhouette of a distant figure with points on his head like animal ears.

“Look!” Tim shouted, “It’s Batman! It’s the best one I got of him.” He reached over and flipped the page for her. The next page was a blurred picture of a boy in a bright uniform, soaring through the air. “I had to zoom in a bunch but this is the best one of Robin.”

“Timothy Drake,” Janet snapped so fiercely that Tim jumped, his coffee sloshing in the mug. “How did you get these pictures?”

“I took them,” he said, his little brow creasing.

Janet stood and paced for a moment while Tim shrank back on the couch, his mug pressed against his chin.

“Letitia!” she shouted and the nanny reappeared, this time with a backpack and a washcloth in her hands. Janet waved the album in the air and demanded, “Why the hell are you taking my eight year old child into downtown Gotham?”

“She’s not!” Tim protested, at the same time Letitia said, “Mrs. Drake, I don’t know what–”

Janet whirled on Tim.

“She doesn’t take me,” Tim said, standing and reaching for the book. Janet held it out of his reach. “I’ve been skipping Science Explorers after school. And soccer at the YMCA at night.”

“Why?” Janet asked, a cold pit of fear warring with anger and bafflement alike. “I thought you liked science.”

“It’s too easy,” Tim said, a little desperately. “It’s all stuff I know. But downtown is interesting.”

“It’s not safe,” Janet snapped. “And it has to stop, right now.”

Tim’s face twisted in fury and then went blank, impassive and unreadable.

“Letitia, you’re fired,” Janet said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Yes, ma’am,” the woman said quietly. “I’ll go pack my things.”

“No!” Tim shouted, standing on the couch, the blankness falling away into sheer rage.

“Yes,” Janet said firmly, tucking the book under her arm. She felt a pang of regret that this, and not praise for his artwork, had to take the precedent, but his safety was more important than feelings about pictures. “It’s not your fault, Tim, that she wasn’t watching you more carefully, but coffee? Trips alone into the city? No. This is why we have a nanny, to keep you safe, and she’s not doing her job. I’m not mad at you, baby, but you need to let me be a good mommy right now.”

Tim was still standing on the couch and he glared at her and then his expression shifted to something cold. He stretched out his arm and before she could order him not to, he tipped his mug and dumped the entire remainder of his coffee straight onto the brushed suede couch. It splashed across the fabric and splattered the white carpet beneath.

“You little shit,” Janet gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth right after. “I’m sorry, Tim, that…I shouldn’t have said that. I think we both need time to calm down.”

It was lunchtime when she went to find him and could hear him crying in his bedroom. It was locked and she knocked gently.

“Go away,” he snarled from inside.

He just needed more time. She let him have it.

She found another nanny. She gave strict instructions that he was to be accompanied to all his classes and clubs and that coffee was absolutely off-limits. He was still angry at her two weeks later and with resignation, she decided that giving him more space might help. She joined Jack in Tokyo.

The next time she went home, it had been five months. Tim had come to join them for a month in the middle of that, so she didn’t feel too guilty about being away so long. Tim chatted with her like nothing had ever happened while with them in Europe and happily took pictures and added things to their itinerary.

But once she came home, it was to more problems. She was beginning to dread going home.

There was a stack of notes from teachers, praising Tim’s intelligence and expressing concern that, while he made friends easily enough, seemed to have trouble maintaining long-term friendships. He was often distracted or fell asleep in class, he conversed easily with adults but ignored most children his own age with the exception of a few. None of the notes had ever been forward to her, all the envelopes neatly sliced open. Tim had opened them.

The nanny was a woman she didn’t recognize even though they’d texted a few times about Tim and scheduling and plans. When Janet pressed, she got it out of Tim that the other woman had resigned quickly and that he had hired another nanny without ever letting Janet find out. His resourcefulness both impressed and frightened her and she dreaded to ask, because she had to ask and she already knew the answer, what he’d been doing in his spare time.

His answer was casual but his body was tense and it was then that Janet realized, with the sharp sensation of nausea, that Tim was both a remarkable child and nearly an absolute stranger to her. And he was afraid of her, afraid of her disapproval, and fiercely defensive of his own freedom all the same.

“Taking pictures,” he’d said vaguely at first.

“Downtown, but I’m careful,” he added after a moment.

“I know where all the police stations are,” he said helpfully, almost an hour later, when he approached her again.

“I take a taxi, so I’m with a grownup,” he said at dinner, as if this constituted responsible childcare.

Janet couldn’t even think of what to say to him. She wasn’t afraid that he would hurt her-- he was, and remained for the most part, a gentle and quiet boy. He was so careful and precise and she watched him that same day rescue a spider and put it outside before taking pictures. There was a steel in him that she recognized, a hardness that surely came from Jack and would maybe benefit him in business someday, and he was stubborn and independent, but he wasn’t violent. More than anything, she was afraid of losing his waning affection.

“You have to talk to him,” she told Jack, passing the buck. “He’s your son. It isn’t safe.”

“Damn straight, it’s not safe!” Jack had thundered, when she finally filled him in on all the details she’d kept back for the past year. “Tim!”

After Jack yelled at him, her plan turned out to be a failure. Tim was furious at both of them and did not seek her out for solace.

Jack tried to confiscate his cameras, but Tim produced another one within hours. She didn’t know if he’d hidden it or purchased it somehow. Jack took that one, too, and the next morning they woke to ten identical cameras in boxes on the porch while a chipper-looking delivery man waited for a signature. Tim had ordered them online the night before, using Jack’s card, and Jack threw his hands in the air and let the boy keep them.

They fired the nanny and hired a new one. Janet stayed behind when Jack left for Australia, determined for once that she could be more obstinate than her sour child and was pleased to find success. Tim’s ire faded quickly and she let some smaller things slide in favor of connecting with him. They didn’t have a traditional relationship, exactly, but he joined her in the morning for coffee when he wasn’t at school, he was happy and even excited to come to her with projects and ideas. He wasn’t sneaking out of club meetings, as far as she could tell, and after two months she was satisfied that he’d adjusted and found a healthy, age-appropriate medium.

If he sometimes seemed a little sad or reserved, she chalked that up to his age-- he was getting close to surging hormones and it was an area where she was lost. She’d have Jack talk to him again. She went to the school and had him moved to more advanced classes and several of his issues at school seemed to disappear.

Halfway through her third month at home, Tim was doing well and Janet was growing bored. The long hours he spent in school and in class, with a nanny to take care of the details, left her with nothing to do after she’d exhausted lunch and manicure dates with friends who seemed caught up in their own on-going lives. Plus, Jack kept calling and asking when she’d join him again and he was, after all, her husband. So she made plans to join him and Tim had accepted her announcement with that same impassive expression he had that could mean any of a dozen things. They were doing better, more attached, so she decided if it bothered him, he’d certainly say something.

And he did.

But he waited until ten minutes before she left for the airport.

“I don’t want you to go,” he’d said, tears in his eyes before he ducked his head.

“Tim,” she’d said, her voice strained. “It’s a little late. Your dad is expecting me.”

“So, call him,” Tim said, almost pleading but not quite.

“I mean, if you really need me,” Janet said slowly, considering. She was torn, so torn-- she’d missed Jack and he was so busy, but Tim wanting her-- needing her-- felt like something she’d been waiting years for him to admit.

“No, never mind,” he said quickly, rubbing at his eyes. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I just had a weird night.”

“Are you sure?” Janet asked, knowing she’d drop her plans if he said the word.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Tell Dad I said hi.”

Janet kissed his forehead and hugged him and went out to the waiting car. She felt a little disappointed but guilty about it, because it was good that he was alright.

She was barely out of the front drive when he came tearing out of the house, crying.

“Mom, mom,” he said, rapping his hand against the window while she rolled it down. “Mom, please, stay. Please stay.”

And maybe it was the stress of being late for her flight, but Janet felt suddenly annoyed with him. He was almost nine years old and had known her travel plans for five days.

“Tim,” she said, trying nonetheless to keep her voice soft and calm, “you don’t need to be so dramatic. It isn’t like you. I’ll come home in a week, baby. Just a week.”

He hiccuped and put his arm across his face and she waited. After a moment, he nodded and turned from the car.

“Love you!” she called after him.

“Love you,” he answered, his voice muffled through his sleeve.

When she called a week later to check on him, he sounded fine. He didn’t say anything about expecting her home, which was a relief since Jack had made plans without asking her first, and Tim was already excited about an experiment he’d been working on. She listened patiently while he talked about it and then he had to go to an evening class.

His ninth birthday came and went and Janet came and went from the house, over and over. Tim fluctuated between giddy and morose, but never at such sharp spikes or with such pronouncement that she grew worried. The one time she did feel a slight pang of concern, Jack soothed her worries with the acknowledgment that Tim was a boy and whatever he was dealing with was probably normal.

Janet really didn’t know so she trusted Jack.

They fell into routines and Janet was now long-used to Tim being awake when she fell asleep and also when she woke up. She wasn’t sure when exactly he slept but he was responsible enough to take naps in the afternoon sometimes, and if it was unusual that he drank coffee he made up for it by brewing extra for her when she was home, better than she could make for herself.

And as he grew, he became increasingly private, or guarded, sometimes even locking his room when he was away.

When she mentioned this to Jack, he snorted once and waved a hand, saying, “I don’t know any twelve year old who wants his mother to find his dirty magazines. I would’ve wanted to kill myself.”

And Tim wasn’t defensive or angry in conversation, but rather gave off an aura of near-constant worry. Janet resigned herself to his growing sense of self-determination and need for privacy, suspecting she was crowding him, and went to Paris with Jack.

They came home sometime in the middle of his thirteenth year to find his worried frown vanished and the basement outfitted with gym equipment. Jack, though he never worked out if he could help it, seemed exceedingly proud of Tim’s newfound hobby as if his pointed insistence on soccer during Tim’s elementary years had something to do with it.

“This is great,” he said to Janet while surveying the equipment. “Maybe I’ll start exercising. It’s great for him.”

Janet couldn’t even find anything to be anxious about. Tim had gone from pushing hard for adulthood to nearly adult, seemingly overnight. He carried himself like he knew where he was going, and his moments of obvious self-doubt or hesitancy were dwindling.

And if Tim, when he did talk to them, spoke often of Bruce Wayne, who was she to deny the boy another mentor? God knew Jack was home even less than she was, and Tim clearly looked up to their long-time neighbor. When she insisted on asking some questions, just to make sure Tim was…safe, was not being ‘taken advantage of’ as she put in mildly, afraid to put ideas into his head if nothing was going on, it turned out that Bruce Wayne shared a fondness for photography and computers. Tim had been caught sneaking onto the property to take pictures and when Janet expressed horror at his trespassing, she’d been introduced to the butler and felt much better afterward.

So, when Tim gently suggested that perhaps, at nearly fourteen and with a responsible neighbor and a busy school schedule, that he no longer needed a nanny, Jack was all too ready to cut it out of the budget and give the boy his freedom.

“He’s a responsible kid,” he assured Janet after letting the nanny go. “He’ll be fine.”

Tim barely slept.

Tim inhaled pots of coffee.

Tim worked in the gym for hours, arranged his own trip overseas the following year, kept his door locked, taught himself how to drive, emailed her regular updates that she always read but didn’t always know what to reply.

And at least he wasn’t using drugs or vandalizing property or throwing parties in the house while they were gone. Her friends were now dealing with such behavior in their children, and two of them had already dealt with arrests and one had a son in rehab-- rehab at fourteen.

If she had any remaining reservations about their new arrangement, they were not discussed with Jack. After years of happily traveling and working together, things had taken a bitter turn between them and when they weren’t fighting about each other, the last thing she wanted to do was fight about Tim.

And Tim was, like Jack said, fine.

He emailed her pictures that she looked at on her phone while waiting with Jack to board the plane to Haiti. For a moment, she considered sharing them with Jack but he was in a bad mood and stressed about a delayed boarding time.

She opened an email to reply to Tim, to admire the pictures and tell him she loved him, but their seating section was suddenly called and she turned the phone off. Tim knew, like Tim knew nearly everything. She’d never known such a smart kid and it was more obvious the older he got, the more children she met.

Tim was fine.

Janet was not.

They arrived to muggy weather in Haiti and she saved the email to Tim in her drafts and in the end, it was never sent.

Janet Drake went home three weeks later, an unusually short absence.

The problem was that she went home in a coffin.


End file.
